When crises strike, nonprofit organizations spring to action, offering their resources, expertise, and innovation to affected communities. Yet COVID-19 brings unprecedented challenges—and unprecedented opportunities—to philanthropic endeavors. Indeed, aside from supporting medical research on COVID-19, nonprofit organizations have been providing medical care, distributing personal protective equipment (PPE), helping address loss of employment and food insecurity, and advocating for global equity in vaccine distribution, among other tasks.

This course partners with the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship (LPCE) in order to provide students with a unique opportunity to experience first-hand how philanthropists and nonprofit organizations are helping address the global effects of this global pandemic. On the theoretical side, the course will examine the workings of philanthropy and of nonprofit organizations, using different sociological perspectives and a series of case studies. Alongside the theoretical content, students will form groups and will develop their own nonprofit ventures to address the social impact of COVID-19. Student ventures will receive startup seed funding and, at the end of the course, will compete over additional seed money. The course will include a series of guest lectures and workshops on entrepreneurship to support student venture development.